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Building the Roads
Who built the Roman roads? Since main
highways began as military roads, it would be logical to think
that they were built by soldiers. Monuments such as Trajan’s
column in Rome and the writings of several Roman historians
such as Livy (c. 59 B.C.-c. 17 A.D.) confirm this impression.
In fact, various sources indicate that each legion had its own
engineer for building roads, bridges, and buildings (an
architectus), also a surveyor (agrimensor) and a leveller (librator).
Most of the actual labor in building the road seems to have
been done by the legionary soldier. Since a spade, hatchet,
and pick were part of the soldier’s normal equipment – on the
march the legions constructed an entrenchment camp every night
– the infantryman already had much of the basic equipment and
experience that would be useful in building a road. Since the
soldiers would use the roads, among other things, to reach
frontier posts or crisis spots, they would probably be
motivated to build carefully if war threatened. However, Livy
notes that in the early Republic the Roman censor, C.
Flaminius, conquered Etruria in north central Italy and “built
a road from Bologna to Arezzo to keep his army from being
idle.” Such motives also inspired later Roman emperors to use
the legions to build roads in peaceful periods as well as when
war threatened.
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